Fragmentation-Avoiding Spectrum Assignment Strategy Based on Spectrum Partition for Elastic Optical Networks

A fragmentation-avoiding spectrum assignment strategy based on spectrum partition is proposed, which is used to resolve the spectrum fragmentation problem in elastic optical networks. For alleviating spectrum fragmentation, a spectrum partition policy, splitting the whole optical spectrum into several dedicated partitions, is presented. Based on this, a joint first-last-fit spectrum assignment policy is presented to enhance the probability of successful transmission of request and spectrum efficiency, where each partition is first used to transmit requests with the same rate in the first-fit policy; and other partitions are used to search available spectrum resources in the last-fit policy when there are no available spectrum resources in the dedicated partition. Meanwhile, a partition selection formula is designed to minimize the interference of spectrum resources during the last-fit spectrum assignment. Moreover, a reconfiguration mechanism, moving requests that are not transmitted in their dedicated partition to their dedicated partition, is also studied. The simulation results indicate that the proposed algorithm can reduce the bandwidth blocking probability and improve spectrum efficiency.